Links

Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on macOS) opens what is under the pointer: a URL in your browser, or a file path in whatever opens that file.

The gesture

• Hold the modifier and a link under the pointer underlines itself and the pointer becomes a hand, so you can see what a click would open before you click.
• Click with the modifier held to open it.
• A plain click is never a link. It starts a selection, or belongs to the program when the program has the mouse. The modifier click is checked first, and only takes the click when there is a link under the pointer, so the program keeps the modifier the rest of the time.

On macOS the modifier is Cmd, not Ctrl, because Ctrl+click there is how a one-button mouse opens a context menu.

What counts as a link

URLs with one of six schemes: http, https, ftp, ftps, file and mailto. Terminal output is whatever a program printed, and a registered handler is a program on your machine, so javascript:, data: and custom app:// schemes are never opened. A URL that wraps at the right edge is one link, not two.

File paths, and only when they name something that exists. Any word under the pointer is a candidate — a bare filename out of ls, a directory, src/main/Foo.java, ~/notes.txt — and it becomes a link only if it resolves to a file or directory on disk. That check is what keeps a screen of prose from underlining itself. It runs once per hover, for the word under the pointer.

• Relative paths resolve against the tab’s own directory, the one its shell is in, not Termina’s. A path in a build’s output means that file in the directory the build ran in.
• ~ and ~/… mean your home directory.
• file:line and file:line:column are recognized at the end of a path, as in a compiler error or a stack trace: Foo.java:42 or main.rs:12:5. The position is passed to your editor when one is set (below).

Sentence punctuation after a link is not part of it, and a closing bracket is kept only when the link opened it, so (see https://example.com) and Wikipedia’s …/Foo_(bar) both come out right.

Links a program declares

A program can also mark text as a link to somewhere else, with the OSC 8 escape sequence: ls --hyperlink, compilers and gh do. The text can be anything, so a declared link is a link whatever it looks like, and the same gesture opens it.

• Its target is shown before the click. Hold the modifier over one and every cell it covers underlines, a link wrapped onto a second row included, and a line at the bottom of the pane says where it really goes.
• The same six schemes, and no others. OSC 8 is exactly where a program can show one thing and point at another, so a javascript: target behind innocent text is not a link at all.
• A file:// link naming this machine, which is how ls --hyperlink writes them, opens the file. One naming another host is never opened or looked up, and neither is a Windows network path (\\host\share), in a link or in plain text. On Windows, even asking whether such a file exists connects to that machine and hands it a hash of your password.
• A declared link outranks the text under it. Where a program has declared one, the words are not also read as a URL or a path.

See What programs can ask for for the other requests a program can make.

Open Link and Copy Link Address

Right-click a link for Open Link and Copy Link Address, with no modifier needed. Copy Link Address copies the URL, or for a path the full path of the file it resolved to.

Opening files in your editor

By default a file opens in whatever your desktop opens it with: open on macOS, xdg-open on Linux, the shell’s file handler on Windows. None of those can take a line number, so the file opens at the top.

Settings → Terminal → Links → Open files with takes a command instead. Three placeholders are filled in:

For example code --goto {file}:{line}:{column}, or subl {file}:{line}.

• The command is split before the placeholders are filled, so a file whose path has a space in it stays one argument. Quotes are for the parts you write yourself, such as an editor whose path has a space.
• A bare command name is looked up on your login shell’s PATH, not on the stripped one an application launched from the desktop inherits, so a command that works in your terminal works from a click.
• The command has to be a program. An application’s display name is not one: on macOS give the path to the executable inside the bundle. When the command cannot be found or will not start, Termina says so.

URLs always go to the desktop’s own handler, the browser or the mail client, whatever this is set to.

Windows

Relative paths need the tab’s directory, and on Windows Termina reads it from the shell process, or takes it from the shell when the shell reports one (OSC 7). A tab whose directory is known resolves relative paths as on the other platforms. A WSL tab’s process is wsl.exe, which says nothing about where the Linux shell inside it is, so there relative paths are links only once the shell reports its directory. The same holds for a program started as bash.exe, which is how Git Bash runs. See What programs can ask for.

A file opens through the shell’s file handler rather than cmd /c start, so &, ^ and % in a name are not interpreted.